GEEK FEMINIST REVOLUTION

by Kameron Hurley

Paperback, 2016

Status

Available

Publication

Tor Trade (2016), Edition: First Edition, 288 pages

Description

"The book collects dozens of Hurley's essays on feminism, geek culture, and her experiences and insights as a genre writer, including "We Have Always Fought," which won the 2013 Hugo for Best Related Work. The Geek Feminist Revolution will also feature several entirely new essays written specifically for this volume."--Amazon.com.

Rating

½ (128 ratings; 3.9)

User reviews

LibraryThing member meandmybooks
This caught my eye for a couple reasons. One being that I can imagine that if I were half my age, born in 1990 rather than 1965, I might well be participating in the geeky internet fandoms Hurley describes in her introduction, those that “have arisen around science fiction and fantasy novels,
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games, and other media.” In my teens and early twenties, when I was a passionate reader of fantasy and science fiction, there wasn't such a community available to me, but I can certainly understand the appeal. The other thing that lured me in is that I'm not half my age, but am in fact a fifty-one year old mom of an ardently feminist fifteen year old daughter, and her sensitivity to unwarranted assumptions and injustices has made me want to be more aware of issues which were little discussed when I was young. When I suggested to her that we might read this together over the summer and discuss it she agreed, so that's the plan.

Reading these essays I often had the feeling of having walked in on a heated debate, in which the main speaker occasionally threw clarifying comments in my direction but whose main attention was, naturally, primarily given to the active long-time participants in the group. The first section, particularly, “Level Up,” which consists of essays written to encourage other sci-fi/fantasy writers, is furiously angry at the obstacles that she and others have dealt with in becoming successful in this field. Having grown up reading female fantasy writers – Norton, Le Guin, McCaffrey, McKillip, Kurtz, etc. – I had no idea that sexism was such an issue. Apparently it is. Anyway, I thought the last two essays in this section were particularly good -- “Taking Responsibility for Writing Problematic Stories,” in which Hurley talks about perpetuating unfortunate tropes in her own writing, and “Unpacking the “Real Writers Have Talent” Myth,” which is, unsurprisingly, about valuing sheer determination rather than hoping to find oneself “gifted” with writing talent.

In the second section a number of the essays were challenging for me but, as a result, especially interesting. “A Complexity of Desires: Expectations of Sex and Sexuality in Science Fiction,” was particularly hard for me to wrap my brain around, but, then, being jarred by novel ideas was part of why I chose this book, so that was okay, and the difficult essays were also, often, the most eye-opening, which says much for Hurley's skill as a writer. Two essays in this section, “Women and Gentlemen: On Unmasking the Sobering Reality of Hyper-Masculine Characters” and “Our Dystopia: Imagining More Hopeful Futures,” seemed especially well done to me, but, really, most of them were good.

The third and fourth sections, “Let's Get Personal” and “Revolution,” similarly, were pretty much all interesting, though, again, the rage sometimes gets tiring. The essays about “Gamergate” were particularly instructive for me, as that was a thing that I recall seeing mention of not too long ago, but only in my peripheral vision, as it were. Fortunately the book has a nice bibliography at the end, and I plan to read a little more deeply into a number of things she mentioned.

I can't resist noting that, having been repeatedly confronted with my ignorances and complacencies, I was a little gratified to notice that Hurley, too, has a blind spot. In “The Horror Novel You'll Never Have to Live: Surviving Without Health Insurance,” she writes about her health crises before the Affordable Care Act (on its march toward the scaffold as I write) and says “Can't afford it (health insurance)? That's okay. The government will subsidize plans for people who can't pay for them. You don't have to worry about being unemployed and homeless and dying of some treatable thing in an alley somewhere.” Which, is, I suppose, the situation in many places, but in other areas, including the one where I live, those nice subsidies are only available to those above a certain income level, and those who fall below are still directed, as Hurley puts it, to go die in an alley somewhere (though, being rural, I am more inclined to imagine a ditch). Still, on the whole I have to admit that Hurley's spreads her sympathies widely, encompassing … well, pretty much everyone but straight white men, and her demands and tirades are clearly not on her own behalf but intended to create a better society for everyone.

As with most essay collections, there were some that were five stars for me, some four, and a few that were forehead-wrinkling threes. Hurley is fiercely protective of the women and men she sees as being persecuted, erased, and minimalized in our culture, and sometimes her insistence on the divide between fragile victims and evil persecutors seemed to me rather over the top. I decided that this was a five star read for me based on the fact that I chose it to shake me out of my complacency and to offer me a really different way of seeing things. Much as I want to be more aware and support people of all sorts in being fairly represented in media, my personal tastes in literature/movies/etc. are, by Hurley's standards, fairly “status quo.” I've never read any of Hurley's fiction, but her character that she describes most frequently, Nyx, is a vicious bounty-hunter who casually copulates with whoever catches her eye, and, even after these enlightening essays I find that rather repellant. Much as I love Eowyn and the way she rides out and defeats the Nazgul, I'm also happy when she ends up marrying Faramir. If instead, after Sauron's defeat, she seduced Arwen, Galadriel, and Rosie and started up the raunchiest brothel in Gondor, I'd be put off. Still, while my tastes are unlikely to change, my understanding of the real importance of having greater diversity of representation in science fiction and fantasy, and even of the reasons these new visions need to be recognized through awards and “best of” lists has been much improved by reading Hurley's fine essays.
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LibraryThing member lycomayflower
Oh, how I wanted to like this more than I did. This collection of many of Hurley's blog posts (plus a few essays written specifically for this volume) deals with science fiction, fantasy, fandom, being a woman in 21st century America, and being a female SF fan in 21st century America. And some of
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these essays are excellent and on point. Occasionally I was nodding and "yessing" so hard I thought I might give myself a fit. But, I dunno, somehow the whole thing just leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that bugs me about this book for days (ever since I first started feeling that way about it), and I can't quite get there. Hurley is often very angry, but rightly so, and I've read other angry people (and other angry women) who didn't turn me off. She's not terribly likable, I guess, but so what? It's not a memoir, where that might matter, and again, I've read other work where I didn't care much for the persona behind it and still got on fine with the work itself. Maybe it's that her view seems so unremittingly bleak? She hits what's difficult and unfair and angry-making about being a woman really hard (fair), but rarely (if ever) points out anything joyful or good or hopeful. I remember thinking about this a lot in the opening section where she talks a lot about her writing career. She says so much about how it's hard work and how the odds are stacked against new writers (especially female ones) and how you must workworkwork and still you are very unlikely to ever live on what you make writing. All true, all fair, and all things (especially that last point) that need to be said, that need to be talked about. But I don't think she ever once said that she kept on writing through the (really) hard times because she loved it, or because it brought her joy, or solace, or hope, or even because she just couldn't not. And the whole collection has that little jag to it. So often I felt: so why bother then? And it's not that there isn't an answer. It's that you'd almost think there isn't an answer from reading this collection. *sigh* YMMV and, honestly, I hope it does, because there is so much here that is good and important and well said, and lots of people should read it. Just. Maybe, while you do, eat a cookie.
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LibraryThing member EllsbethB
I really loved the beginning and the end of this book (the intro and the Hugo winning essay). The blog posts in the middle were a bit hit and miss for me. I think this was mostly due to the tone and style. However, all the entries touched on good topics worthy of discussion and I found myself
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wanting to talk about them with other people. I enjoyed and learned from the "Revolution" section the most. I am glad this book it out there, and I'd love to read more on these topics.
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LibraryThing member KelMunger
First, Kameron Hurley’s geek-girl credentials are in order; she’s the Hugo Award-winning author of Empire Ascendant.

And she’s been writing about what it means to be a geek-, nerd-, and fangirl—especially in the current atmosphere of open misogyny in the geek-o-sphere (think Gamergate)—for
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quite a while. Her style is natural (and occasionally profane, which is understandable given the subject matter), light and easy; the subject matter is anything but that as she lays out the science fiction and fantasy tropes that keep female characters on the margins, receptacles for male desire. Then she deftly draws the connection to the ways in which this system keeps women from fully engaging in fandom.

While most of this will be old news for those who’ve followed Gamergate and the Hugo’s “sad puppies / rabid puppies” controversy, it’s a must-read for popular culture fans, not to mention damn good writing.
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LibraryThing member adamwolf
This was great. If people are expecting a set of essays about "geek feminists" without any personal details, they're probably not going to be happy.

Almost all of these are very strong. I wasn't excited about the SadPuppies/RabidPuppies recap, or the GamerGate recap, but everything else was really
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great.
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LibraryThing member nicolewbrown
I've always considered myself a geek and I've always considered myself a feminist even when others would try to paint it as a bad word. What is a feminist but one who wants equal rights and pay for women all over the world. I know that white women in the United States make 79 cents for every dollar
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a man makes [Hispanic women make 55 cents and African American women make 60 cents. Asian American women make 84 cents.] but that does not really hit home until you read this book and see what the author goes through as a female writer of science fiction/fantasy novels. Also, I didn't realize how women still get looked over for jobs for various reasons even though they are unfounded. The example I will give here is when the author was working at a movie theater and was up for a manager position but was passed over because it was assumed she would not be able to pick up the sixty-pound film reels which were part of the job. The thing was, she could. Of course, she had no idea at the time that this was happening. I thought we'd left that stuff behind.

This book is about a revolution that is happening in the world of geekdom. Women have always been geeks but over the years our numbers have increased and some of the white boys are getting upset with the disruption of the status quo. "Women have gone from making up 25 to 30 percent of gaming audiences just ten years ago to over 50 percent of video game players, and 40 to 50 percent of creators. Forty percent of science fiction authors are female, as are 60 percent of speculative genres. Thier voices, their presence cannot be denied or explained away with talks of tokenism and exceptionalism. Women are here."

This author is the great-granddaughter of resistance fighters from France and studied resistance movements in South Africa for her Master's degree. She knows how to fight back and isn't afraid to do so. She also believes that she needs to in order to make things easier for those that will come after her. She's been fighting for over ten years now through her blog and in a way her books which broke barriers by featuring strong women characters and characters that are from the LGBT community. She has won the Sydney J. Bounds Award and the Kitschies Award for her first novel, God's War, and the Hugo award twice, once for a blog she wrote that is included in this book and has been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Nebula Award, and the Locus Award among many others. She is well qualified to speak on this subject.

The first section of this book is titled "Level Up" and deals with helping you to try to hone your writing skills. One of the most important lessons is persistence and that anyone can be a writer if you keep at it long enough. Also how the book business is, in fact, a business and a cutthroat one at that and you will have to be tough to survive it so make sure that this is really what you want. She stresses the importance of responsibility of writing. That what you write is important and you have to own it so make sure you are not reckless or get something wrong or perpetuate a damaging stereotype.

The second section is titled "Let's Get Personal" and lets you get to know her. She talks about why she writes what she writes, which is dark fiction and about how she has always been overweight and that that is just how she is built even though she eats healthy and excersises and how that has affected her life. When she lost a job after being very sick and put in the hospital where she found out she was Type I diabetic she needed to stay insured or risk having her diabetes being considered a pre-existing condition. So she paid a lot of money for private insurance while she looked for a job and eventually ended up living on the couch of a friend and using expired insulin and testing the minimum amount of times. Then she lucked out and got a job working at a company that paid for full coverage with no cost paid by her. She also writes about dealing with online criticism and being a rebel and fixing a broken system.

The third section is titled Revolution and it's just that: a call to revolution. It's meant to inspire you to be the hero and go out shake things up and do your part. Yes, she does do one essay on Gamergate and one on Sadpuppy. She also covers bullying and censorship online. And the bullying can take the form of trolls whose only goal is to upset you in any way they can with suicide the ultimate prize. Then there's those who call a SWAT team to your house, stalk you, and threaten your life and there's nothing the police can do or are willing to do about these people. They tell women to just stay off of the internet the way you would tell a woman to avoid getting raped to stay at home. Maybe the laws need to be more strict. Also included in this section is her Hugo award winning blog "We Have Always Fought: Challenging the 'Women, Cattle, and Slaves' Narrative". This blog focuses on how women have fought in wars across time and have largely been ignored.

This book really made me rethink what it is to be a woman and a feminist. It also inspired me to take up the banner and be a part of the revolution against bullies that attack those for their gender, color or sexuality. The essays were quite interesting and if you are a blogger or writer you will definitely get something out of this. But even if you are only a geek this book is well worth reading.

Quotes
It’s easy to pretend you’re “normal”, just like everyone else. But normal is a lie. Normal is a story.

-Kameron Hurley (The Geek Feminist Revolution p 104)

It’s this resignation with getting a future we didn’t want that the people in charge are relying on. The systems are too old, too ingrained. Power cannot be moved. There structures have always been here. This is the only way the future can be. They love it when we think this. Yet, like so much of the world we’re told about, it’s all a lie. It doesn’t really exist. The future is malleable. That’s what they don’t want you to know. When you believe people can’t change the world, they win. Of course people can change the world. Who do you think got us here in the first place?
-Kameron Hurley (The Geek Feminist Revolution p 135)

For every good you do, you do harm somewhere else. Maybe sanity is simply accepting this truth, and carrying on regardless, and doing the best you can.
-Kameron Hurley (The Geek Feminist Revolution p 197)

The truth is that who is good and who is bad is highly dependent on who wins, and whose point of view we’re writing from.
-Kameron Hurley (The Geek Feminist Revolution p 203)

Life is a series of unrelated incidents. It is the human mind that seeks to string them together into narratives, into story. It is the human mind that gives events meaning.
-Kameron Hurley (The Geek Feminist Revolution p 274)
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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
I'm generally a pretty even-keeled person, sometimes to a fault. I tend to let things slide a lot longer than I should. When I need to remember what anger is good for, how to direct it appropriately and what to do with it, I read Kameron Hurley. Even when I don't always agree with her, she's
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passionate about doing right and reducing harm. She's one of the people who taught me how to apologize, and I always go back to her writing when I'm struggling with how to do the right thing and how to act appropriately in diverse spaces. She admits when things are hard, but doesn't let that be an excuse for not doing them, which is the kind of strength I find I need in times like these.
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LibraryThing member e2d2
I wanted to love this book, but instead I was underwehelmed. Most likely because what I expected this book to be (essays on geek culture and feminism and how that sphere is changing) was not what this book was (one geek feminist writer sharing her life experience at this intersection). The essays
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are worth reading - especially the Mad Max: Fury Road essay. But having already thought a lot of about many of these issues, I wasn't in the camp of readers who needed to be convinced. I'm definitely interested enough in her writing to pick up one of her novels.
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LibraryThing member fred_mouse
Wonderful collection of essays. The essays on writing were interesting, but from a somewhat voyeuristic perspective. Those with a (somewhat) intersectional feminist perspective on geek culture were fascinating, and managed to have some ideas new to me. The section of very personal essays told me a
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lot I didn't know/understand about the USA medical system, and while I appreciate Hurley's honest, I felt uncomfortably voyeuristic about it*. The final section (Revolution) had essays on a number of events that I remember experiencing in real time, and it was quite jarring to realise how much of those I'd forgotten, even while I'd attempted to be well-informed at the time.

* unlike the writing essays, where the voyeuristic feeling was more like having been invited in to observe something not entirely public, these felt like having accidentally found oneself in a private conversation.
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LibraryThing member tronella
Not bad, but it didn't seem particularly revolutionary to me, possibly because I'm already familiar with most of the geek feminism topics in here. The most interesting parts to me were about the author's day job writing marketing texts and about US health care. Several of the essays on specific TV
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shows and films seemed to repeat the same point multiple times within the same essay, so they dragged a bit.
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LibraryThing member pwaites
The Geek Feminist Revolution is a collection of essays by science fiction and fantasy author Kameron Hurley, who’s written a continually growing number of novels (hint, readGod’s War!) and the Hugo Award winning essay “We Have Always Fought.” While the topic of the collection is nominally
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the intersection of feminism and SFF pop culture, the collection actually spans a broader array of subjects varying from analysis of media such as Mad Max: Fury Road, to what it takes to be a writer, and to elements of her personal life, such as her near death experience and living with a chronic disease.

Many of the essays are adapted blog posts. Since I occasionally read Hurley’s blog, I was already familiar with some of the essays included in the collection, such as “On Internet ‘Bravery'” and “Wives, Warlords, and Refugees: The People Economy of Mad Max“. There were also some new pieces written specifically for the collection, although I couldn’t always identify which these were. Was the Hugo Award mess a new essay? Going in, I was fairly certain going in that I would enjoy Hurley’s collection. I’ve previously enjoyed her essays for her insights as well as the sense of focused anger that comes through almost everything she writes.

If you’re interested in this collection but unsure if you want to commit, I’d suggest reading some of the essays which are posted online to get a feel. “We Have Always Fought” would be a good one to start with.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
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LibraryThing member bragan
A collection of essays -- all, I believe, originally blog posts -- by Hugo-winning SF writer Kameron Hurley, in which she talks about writing, feminism, the importance of representation, dealing with criticism and online harassment, and the power of stories, among other things.

There's a fair amount
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of anger in these essays, but it's a focused, clear-headed, thoughtful sort of anger, and she's saying a lot of things that are very much worth paying attention to.
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LibraryThing member sanyamakadi
I must have just picked this up because I was intrigued by the title and the llama on the front, because I didn't realize until I got into it that it was about feminism within the scifi community. But as I am a scifi/fantasy fan this was fine. The essays were very well written, and reinforced
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social responsibility without being preachy. Plus, llamas!
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LibraryThing member davisfamily
I think I would have enjoyed this more if I had read them as individual essays. Multiple chapters were about the same subject, just different examples. I found myself just skipping large chunks.
I did enjoy the chapters about her struggle with health care (very depressing, yet inspiring) and how she
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writes.
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LibraryThing member beentsy
Very, very good. Made me think of all the tiny ways in everyday life that the narrative is skewed and needs to be pushed and changed and moved forward. And, how my own thinking excuses things and how that's BS and I need to examine and question more. For the last month I've been thinking on
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narratives in fiction that I've liked and that I've hated and really looking at my thinking about what parts made me uncomfortable. Was it me or was it the story or was it????

I will be thinking and questioning things much more closely and looking for more reading experiences that keep me thinking and questioning.
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Awards

Hugo Award (Nominee — 2017)
Audie Award (Finalist — 2017)
Locus Award (Finalist — Non-Fiction — 2017)
British Fantasy Award (Winner — Non-Fiction — 2017)

Language

Original language

English

Original publication date

2016-05-31

Physical description

8.29 inches

ISBN

0765386240 / 9780765386243

Other editions

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